


The After Party

by roseygal99



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batman and Jim Gordon are good friends, Mild Hurt/Comfort, they should talk more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:54:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseygal99/pseuds/roseygal99
Summary: Jim was fairly certain he’d never seen Batman so openly… human before. Even after some of their worst scrapes when Batman was practically bleeding out or loaded with some sort of toxin, he had always stood tall, stoic, betraying not even a hint of weakness. After a while, it had only added to the legend of it all.Batman: the man who did not sleep, who bled but did not feel pain.ORAfter a truly crappy week, Bats and Jim decide they could both use a breather.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	The After Party

**Author's Note:**

> Should I do this night from Batman's perspective next?

Jim Gordon sighed as he leaned back heavily against the brick wall, slick with freezing rain that had just begun to fall. He popped his collar as a bitter wind sliced through his duster to cut straight to the bone. His old joints ached in protest against the cold and he hissed a cursed, rubbing his eyes under his glasses.

It had been an exceptionally rough week, the kind that made him long for the early days, back when the worst things he had to worry about were petty drug dealers and domestic assault cases. Back then, most officers didn’t even wear Kevlar half the time. They walked the streets armed with a badge and a rarely used gun and felt invincible, wholly confident in their ability to stand between the public and those who meant to do harm. Back then, the uniform and the badge had been enough – more than enough to discourage most crime, and where the uniform and badge failed, it didn’t take much more to straighten things out.

But now as he watched as a dozen officers struggled to drag Killer Croc’s unconscious body out of the harbor, he couldn’t help but scoff at the hellish circus the city had become. Now most officers didn’t wear Kevlar, not out of a sense of safety, but rather a sense of futility. Standing against Croc or Bane or even Freeze, Kevlar would only slow the inevitable.

Some time not too long ago, a new darkness had spilled over the city like rain, and a wicked breed of evil had crept up from the sewers in its wake, ushering a new, horrible era that even now he couldn’t begin to explain, let alone accept. It was the stuff of nightmares; the sort of horrors that now plagued the city on a near constant basis used to be considered “once in a lifetime.”

But this week - this godforsaken week - had been one for the books, even in Gotham.

Jim’s phone chimed and he spared a glance from the scene in front of him to peek at the notification. It was a confirmation message letting him know that Harley and the Penguin had been safely returned to Arkham. Croc was basically as good as done at this point, which left only Ivy to worry about. Last he’d heard, his guys had her cornered in a plant nursery at the natural sciences museum. It was by no means an ideal location for a standoff with her, but Batman was there too, which just about evened the odds as much as anything anyone could hope for. It was the only reason he wasn’t on his way there now. That, and the fact that he was fairly certain that even if he left now and blew through every stop on the way there, he’d get there long after the fight was over, for better or worse. Fights with Ivy were fierce, but rarely very long.

Jim sighed again and tapped a cigarette free from the pack. The gentle thump and scuff of boots on damp pavement behind him only proved his point, and he said without turning around, “Ivy?”

“Neutralized.” Batman stepped forward so that they were side by side, coughing slightly, his eyes on Croc.

The officers had been trying to work by sheer manpower alone for nearly twenty minutes before Bullock, sweating an irritated, finally shouted, “For the love of– just rig ‘im up to one of the trucks already!” Now a few chains were looped onto Croc’s pants, the other ends hooked onto the back of a fire engine, and they were slowly backing him out of the water.

Jim noticed Batman’s arm wrapped around his torso, clutching his side. He assumed the gesture was meant to be inconspicuous, hidden almost entirely under the thick cape, and knowing Batman, it could mean anything from a simple bruise to a punctured lung. Or worse.

Without another word, he shook free a second cigarette and held it out.

“I don’t smoke,” Batman said.

“Humor me.”

To Jim’s mild surprise, and perhaps underscoring his belief that this had in fact been a spectacularly awful week, Batman took the cigarette and held it while Jim lit both of them.

It didn’t escape the older man’s notice that the black gloved hand trembled slightly, and Jim knew enough about the insulation of the suit, having seen Batman stand comfortably in significantly harsher conditions, to know that it wasn’t from the cold.

Batman took a slow drag, the butt flaring then fading again in the darkness, and exhaled a cloud of smoke and condensation into the frosty air.

They stood like that for a while, wrapped in silence as they watched the officers work. Well, to be fair Jim was only half-watching the officers, one eye glued to Batman. He smelled faintly botanical, sweet like nectar but also bitter and sharp like vinegar and acid. Small patches of his cape were missing, ragged holes that looked reminiscent of burn marks, and a light dusting of gold covered most of his body. Pollen, Jim assumed.

So, she’d put up a hell of a fight then.

“You’re staring, Jim.”

The older man jumped like a child caught stealing a cookie and redirected his gaze to the scene. “Christ,” he muttered, rubbing his neck somewhat sheepishly. “Here I thought I was being slick.”

Batman dropped the cigarette and snuffed it into the wet pavement. “Was there anything else?”

“No, thank God. I think that’s everything.”

“Then you should get home. Get some rest,” Batman said, turning to leave.

It was one of the few times Jim had had the chance to actually watch Batman leave rather than be left talking to the open air. He watched the man reach for a grapple beneath his cape and felt something drop into the pit of his stomach as he thought about the ride home.

No, he couldn’t go home. It was something Jim had learned soon after he’d gotten married, back when he was still new to the job. He couldn’t go straight home after a rough night. No matter how much he might want to, he knew he needed to get his head on straight before he walked through the door. Make sure he was ready to interact, to be a father and a husband, to be with his family. Otherwise, the events of the night clung to him like smoke, wafting with him from room to room and turning him into something dour and unapproachable. It wasn’t fair to his family or anyone around him, and he’d learned that the hard way, but he’d learned it all the same.

But this was one of those unique nights where the thought of being alone was almost worse. The way his mind was racing, had been racing for the past few days, the last thing he wanted was to be left to his own devices. To think about all the ways he’d screwed up, all the people who had been endangered or worse because of a clue he’d missed, a decision he’d made too slowly or blown all together. He would sit and he would think and he would descend into self-flagellation until he was just about ready to hand in his letter of resignation and fling himself into the harbor. It was a well-trodden path at this point, and one he didn’t want to revisit.

So, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage what was left of the night, Jim found himself asking, “Where are you headed?”

Batman paused and tossed a curious look over his shoulder. It was hard to tell through the mask, but Jim got the feeling he had an eyebrow raised.

“Is something wrong,” Batman asked.

“No, no, I was just…” Jim took a breath and jammed his half-frozen hands into his pockets, feeling impossibly foolish. What was he doing? “It’s been a rough week,” he continued. “And I was just…” His sentence trailed off with another deep sigh. “Eh, never mind. It was nothing.”

Batman kept his eyes on him, appraising him the way Jim had seen him study countless crime scenes. It made him feel strangely vulnerable, almost nude.

“Are you hungry?” Batman asked suddenly.

And even though he was one of the most infuriatingly inscrutable men in the world, Jim knew him well enough by now to recognize this for what it was. A small lifeline.

“Starving,” Jim grinned, dropping his cigarette to crush it underfoot. “There’s a little hole in the wall on 4th.”

“McLaren’s?”

“That’s the one.” Jim was beyond amused by the idea that Batman might be familiar with the little mom & pop health code violation they called a diner. He imagined him strolling in for a milkshake at 2 in the morning, cowl and all, and having an autographed portrait added to the wall of celebrity customers.

Jim glanced back at the scene. They’d finally hauled Croc into one of the armored vans and were just beginning to clear out.

“We’re just about done here,” he said. “Give me about 10 minutes and I should– Goddammit.” He was talking to himself again. Perhaps the first time had been a fluke.

About thirty minutes later, Jim was pulling up in front of the little diner, the windows papered with sun damaged menu items and flashing neon lights, and the only place still open at this ungodly hour. A bell chimed as he stepped in, immediately blinded by the contrast from wintry night to bright fluorescent interior.

“Gordy!” the round man at the grill shouted by way of greeting.

“Pauly.” Jim was too tired to return the same vigor, but he offered a smile, tugging off his coat that was now heavy with rain and stiff with cold.

Without another word between them, Pauly threw a few extra ingredients on the flat-top grill to start preparing Jim’s usual.

In the back, a dark figure was hunched in the corner booth by a window, completely incongruous with the otherwise ordinary setting, like a Tesla in a Norman Rockwell painting.

He caught Pauly’s eye then, and Pauly shot him wary half-raise of an eyebrow as if to say, _What the hell you got going on here?_ and _Am I gonna have to update my insurance policy on this place?_ and _Do you think he’ll sign a photo?_

Jim just shrugged in a way he hoped was reassuring then made his way back to the booth and slipped in. Batman was leaning over a half-drained mug of coffee, his head in his hand, and though Jim couldn’t see his eyes through the white lenses in the mask, he could’ve sworn the other man was dozing off.

“Surprised you’re sitting with your back to the door,” Jim noted. “Thought you were too paranoid for that sort of thing.”

Batman simply gestured toward the chrome napkin holder, angled in such a way that he had a clear view of the entire restaurant behind him. Of course.

Jim chuckled and shook his head as Pauly came over with a glass of Coke. He held up a coffee pot, offering to refill Batman’s cup, but Batman held up a tired hand and Pauly returned to the kitchen.

“So,” Jim began, tapping his straw against the table to open it, “made it through another one.”

“Hn.” Batman rubbed his face in an exhausted and somewhat startlingly human gesture and coughed, groaning a little.

Jim was fairly certain he’d never seen Batman so openly… human before. Even after some of their worst scrapes when Batman was practically bleeding out or loaded with some sort of toxin, he had always stood tall, stoic, betraying not even a hint of weakness. After a while, it had only added to the legend of it all.

Batman: the man who did not sleep, who bled but did not feel pain.

He’d taken on a mythos, became something larger than himself. Jim had watched the transformation with his own two eyes, had seen the way the conversation shifted around him in the precinct and on the streets. In the months after Batman’s first appearance, he went from being the crazy man in a costume to the lurking force that hung over the city the same way clouds always seemed to – at once haunting and familiar.

He’d known all along that the stories of his exploits were overblown, but he’d let them grow anyway because he also knew how necessary it was that the city believed them, that they saw Batman as this otherworldly entity. It was the only way for any of it to work. Batman’s very name, the signal in the sky, they had to be backed by an unshakeable belief that he was something more than a man.

Because it wasn’t enough to be a good man. Not here; not anymore. Good men didn’t scare criminals, not the kind that stalked the streets of Gotham. And good men didn’t last long in these parts, besides. Harvey Dent’s presence in Arkham was a painful, permanent reminder of that fact. And it was Harvey Dent, along with other fallen or corrupted good men, who solidified the cynicism that clung to the hearts of most Gothamites like a parasite and made it nearly impossible for them to take any solace in the efforts or words of simple _good men._

In a battle against devils, men simply did not do.

No, they needed something more, something greater. They needed a legend, a story whispered over barrel fires and on street corners, an ever-present threat to those who prowled the shadows and a hope for those searching for the light.

They needed Batman.

And Jim was mature enough to admit that he needed it, too. He clung to the stories, craved them the same way a child might cling to Santa Clause – a desperate last attempt at hope in this city that seemed to try its damnedest to crush it.

But now, sitting across from Batman and getting a chance to really look at him up close in something other than the dim lit of a rooftop or back alley, and seeing the drawn lines in his face and the weary drag in his voice, Jim couldn’t help but kick himself for being so foolish, so selfish. It was one thing for the city to believe the stories, but he didn’t have that luxury. He couldn’t. Because at the end of the day there needed to be at least one person out there who saw Batman for who he really was: just a good man trying to save the city from itself.

Someone had to see that – had to _know_ that.

Otherwise, who would save the Batman from the city?

And when Batman coughed again and stretched his neck painfully from side to side, wincing as he did, Jim kicked himself again. He’d noticed from the first moment that Batman seemed worse for wear, yet never once had he suggested any medical intervention, however futile the offer might be. And he vowed in that moment to do better at remembering that this man before him was just that.

A man.

“You all right?” Jim asked in a belated attempt to do what he should’ve done almost an hour ago. And many times, before that. “If you want, I can get one of the guys to give you a once over.”

“I’m fine,” Batman said, his eyes scrunched.

Sitting here, Batman’s chest and arms were visible beneath the cape, and Jim could get a better read on the extent of the damage. The burns he’d noticed in the cape itself were also on his torso, leaving holes in the fabric that revealed the tough, lightweight armor beneath, and Jim recognized the telltale slashes across his chest and biceps left by Ivy’s thorny vines, some of them slicing clean through to the skin. There was a particularly deep gash across Batman’s left side, and when he noticed Jim staring, he let the cape fall a bit more to cover himself.

“Really,” he added with a slight edge in his voice.

Jim put up his hands in surrender. “Hey, listen. I’m not your mother. If you say you’re fine,” he shrugged, taking a swig from his Coke, and he could’ve sworn he saw some tension seep out of Batman’s shoulders, as if he’d been bracing himself for a battle on this issue.

Jim was a caring man, and he could worry and nag with the best of them, but he was also an old man, and tired. And the last thing he intended to do tonight on top of everything else was argue with another grown man about a damn checkup.

“What do you usually do after nights like this?” he asked, pivoting easily. “I’m assuming by the nervous sweats on Pauly’s collar that you’re not exactly a regular here.”

“No,” Batman granted. “Usually, I go for a drive.”

“Huh. I would’ve thought you’d just go right home. Crawl into bed and pass out.”

“Sometimes, but not always. Nights like this… I need to be alone for a while. Clear my head, wait for the adrenaline to wear off.”

It hadn’t occurred to Jim that the Batman might live with other people. He wondered what that looked like. A wife? A family? He found himself imagining the Christmas card – a smiling family in matching sweaters and then… Batman. His lips curled into a smile around the straw in his mouth.

But he also understood the sentiment exactly, and he nodded, saying, “I hear ya,” while suppressing the million questions burning at the back of his throat about Batman’s home life. Not the time, not the place, and not his business.

“Do you want to, uh… Do you want to talk about it?” he asked after a brief pause. “What happened, I mean?” Jim’s eyes flicked back and forth between his Coke and Batman’s face, suddenly feeling wildly out of his depth. He figured it was a necessary question to ask, especially given everything that had happened, but he felt impossibly unqualified to have the conversation with this man in particular.

“No,” Batman said after another moment, staring out the window at the sparse, pre-dawn traffic. If Jim were anybody else or any younger, he might have flushed with embarrassment.

Because of course Batman didn’t want to talk about it with him. What could he possibly offer by way of advice or comfort to the man who had saved the entire city – hell, the world – on multiple occasions; who had fought battles in different solar systems and gone toe to toe with aliens and demigods? Comparatively, Jim was a nobody, practically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Self-pity wasn’t a familiar sensation for him, and he shifted uncomfortably in the overstuffed seat, cringing as the plastic covering whined beneath him.

“Not about tonight,” Batman continued.

Jim blinked, confused, and Batman went on a little hesitantly. “Let’s just… talk.”

“Oh.” The response felt incredibly lame coming out of his mouth and seemed to plop onto the table between them, but he was so caught off guard that he didn’t know what else to say.

It looked almost like Batman was suddenly unsure, because he immediately straightened in his seat, and his expression became more guarded, that familiar stoicism returning to his mouth and all of the apparent exhaustion evaporating in an instant.

“You’re right,” he said quickly, even though Jim hadn’t said anything. “It’s unnecessary. And you’re probably tired. You should go.”

Batman had just begun to slide out of the booth – wincing in pain as he went – when Jim reached out a hand.

“Hey, hey, wait a second. At this point I won’t be getting to sleep anytime soon, and I’ll bet the same goes for you. Now, I plan to sit here, eat my roast beef sandwich and maybe get an extra order of fries. I can’t force you, but if you wanna sit here with me and talk about something other than criminally insane meta humans and murder and armed robberies, I’d like that quite a bit.”

Batman held his gaze for a moment, still halfway between sitting and standing as Pauly returned and set two plates down on the table. A hefty roast beef sandwich pierced with a toothpick and topped with a pickle for Jim and a Philly cheesesteak for Batman. Jim couldn’t tell if it was his little speech or the food that pushed him over the edge, but Batman settled back into the seat, a little stiff, but apparently ready to stay for at least as long as it took to finish the sandwich.

Jim grinned as he watched him drag over a ketchup and squirt it into the center of the sandwich. The whole image was just so surreal he wouldn’t have been surprised if his alarm went off in a minute and he woke up only to realize the whole thing had been a dream.

“So then,” Jim said around a mouthful of bread and meat, “seen any good movies lately?”


End file.
